


Legacy

by DivineProjectZero



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Gen, implied one-sided GoGo/Tadashi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 17:11:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2659895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DivineProjectZero/pseuds/DivineProjectZero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Please</i>, Tadashi thinks as he test activates Baymax once again, <i>I don’t want my brother to be alone</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legacy

10.

Tadashi worries about Hiro. It’s impossible not to. He’s a trouble magnet with a snarky attitude and a sharp mouth and even sharper brains. Graduated high school at thirteen and now collecting money from illegal bot fight bets. Virtually friendless and bored to death.

(He hates to admit it, but Tadashi is his brother’s only friend.)

Sometimes, watching his little brother alone with only his brain to eat him up from the inside out makes Tadashi feel like his heart is breaking.

He worries about what will happen to Hiro if Tadashi isn’t around to take care of him.  

He throws his frustration and worries into building Baymax.  He’s going to do it right. Baymax will help people. So many people. Including the one person most important to Tadashi.

Once he has Baymax properly programmed, he’ll bring Hiro to the lab.

 _Please_ , Tadashi thinks as he test activates Baymax once again, _I don’t want my brother to be alone._

9.

Alistair likes to think that sometimes sacrifice is necessary.

It started small. Sacrificing a few hours of sleep. Sacrificing a meal here or there. A relationship or two. A few hundred dollars. His free time.

Then the sacrifices grew. A few hours of lost sleep mutated into sleepless nights stretching endlessly. A skipped meal became several days of water and nutrition bars. No relationships turned into having no family. A few hundred dollars multiplied into millions of dollars. His free time became his entire life. 

Sacrifices began to consume his life. He sacrificed his honesty. His integrity. Ethics. Reputation.

His happiness.

(Abigail goes in and never comes out.)

He tells himself that it’s worth it. Success is worth it. His company is worth it. The development of technology is worth it. It has to be. His life is worthless otherwise.

(Sometimes sacrifices are worth it, but is this worth it? Is it?)

8.

The microbots are an invention unparalleled. Their capabilities are endless, spilling over to the darkest crevices of Robert’s mind.

It’s a terrible idea. It’s a cruel idea. The product of a fourteen year-old boy’s heart and brain isn’t meant to be a weapon. It’s the worst kind of betrayal to take a piece of technology meant to create and use it to destroy. Abigail would never condone it.

What does it matter? She’s _gone_.

And that thought, the snap of his heart breaking for the thousandth time, is what pushes Robert to grab the neurocranial transmitter and set it on his own head.

As the building erupts in fire and a swarm of black shelters him, Robert knows that he cannot ever go back. He could never teach Hiro. The boy has already surpassed him.

(He doesn’t expect that thought to break him so utterly.)

7. 

It’s like she’s been thrown back eleven years ago. She’d been a junior in college when she had stood in a bleak hospital corridor and learned that her two nephews were going to be orphans. They hadn’t let her see what had become of the boys’ parents.

It feels unreal when there are no bodies to see, no faces to identify. The doctors speak confidently, as if there is no margin for error, and there must be. Hiro could calculate it. Cass is sure.

Hiro has a concussion and multiple abrasions and damaged eardrums. They will heal in time.  Whether he will recover from the loss of his brother, Cass is not sure.

Cass isn’t sure if she’ll recover from it, either.

She hates hospitals. She wants to go home, tuck Hiro in, maybe bake something to soothe her nerves. She wants her boys safe and sound.

Her boy.

She has just the one now.

6.

Everything has a place. Wrenches must be laid out in order by size. Names must be listed alphabetically. Rules are made to be obeyed.

Healthy college students shouldn’t be dead. 

Tadashi’s workspace shouldn’t be empty and lifeless. 

Hiro shouldn’t be so alone.

All the rules are breaking. Fred is angry. Honey Lemon is sad. GoGo is slow. Wasabi’s workbench is a _mess_ , and for once he can’t muster the energy to put things back together.

He’s supposed to go to classes, work in the lab, go home, sleep, and rewind. He repeats his schedule like clockwork. One by one, he reorganizes his tools. Things start going back to where they were.

(Except Hiro. His absence is just as cutting as Tadashi’s. It’s like they’ve lost them both instead of one.)

After Wasabi’s phone receives a message from Baymax, he nearly runs a red light in his haste. This is when he knows that they’ve inherited this little brother whether he likes it or not.

5.

There are dark circles under Hiro’s eyes and a slump to his shoulders as he examines the schematics for the new suits. GoGo examines the exhaustion outlined in Hiro’s spine and wishes she didn’t recognize that curve of weariness.

There are fleeting impressions of Tadashi in the color of Hiro’s eyes and the curve of his smile. Sometimes, when she hears Hiro tapping on the keyboard, she turns expecting to see Tadashi instead.

(It wasn’t exactly a crush, not really; more like a hyperawareness of Tadashi at all times. The cadence of his voice, the way he would move. The consideration of an idea: a _maybe_ to roll around in her mind like one of her wheels until she tired of the thought.)

It’s a little like being haunted by a _what if_ that she’ll never learn the answer to.

After they catch the guy in the mask, GoGo hopes that Hiro starts to laugh more. He looks the most haunted out of all of them.

4. 

Fred thinks Hiro might be the closest thing he has ever had to a sibling. It’s a jarring thought to have in the middle of a training session, but it’s true. He never had a concept of a family beyond his parents. It’s a change to his life he never expected.

Just like the moment he realized his life now included fights against super villains, Fred welcomes the change with both arms wide open. Both figuratively and literally.

“What are you doing?” Hiro stares at his widespread arms with a healthy dose of suspicion.

Fred grins. “Would you be uncomfortable if I hugged you?”

“Uh, yes. Definitely.”

“Alright, then!” Fred scoops Hiro into a tight hug.

“Hey!”

“Sometimes you need a little discomfort,” Fred says.

Going beyond his comfort zone is how Fred made his friends, and he suspects it’s something worth teaching his new little brother.

Judging by the way Hiro slowly relaxes into him, it’s a lesson worth learning.

3. 

Honey Lemon doesn’t regret putting Tadashi’s data card back in Baymax.

It chills her to the bone when she thinks of Baymax approaching Dr. Callaghan with the intent to terminate. Destroy. _Kill._

Perhaps more devastating: Hiro, still-raw wounds ripped open again, his rage bleeding all over the floor. A caregiver turned into a weapon to safeguard a boy’s broken heart.

She’s so glad Tadashi wasn’t able to see any of this.

Dr. Callaghan is why Tadashi isn’t around. Dr. Callaghan ripped Hiro’s family away. She’d trusted him, respected him, and he’d betrayed them. He was a liar. Traitor. Murderer.

Baymax was never meant to hurt anybody. Hiro never would have asked Baymax to do this. Tadashi was never supposed to die so young.

Honey doesn’t regret anything—Tadashi would never forgive her if she had done otherwise—but she thinks of Hiro crying in the dark when he thought she wouldn’t notice, and she wishes Dr. Callaghan had died in the fire.

2.

Hiro knows that it’s dangerous to go into the portal. There are too many unknown variables. The portal may collapse. The environment in the portal may be hazardous. He might end up like Tadashi.

Aunt Cass would never forgive him.

But.

He thinks he understands how Tadashi felt now. He can’t knowingly abandon a person in danger when he knows how much it hurts to lose somebody.

He doesn’t want to be the person who hurts others to compensate for his own pain. He doesn’t want to ever make Baymax be other than Baymax again. He doesn’t want to be like Dr. Callaghan. He wants to be like Tadashi. He wants to rewind time and be a person who hadn’t hesitated to follow his brother into the fire.

He wants to be the person who could have saved Tadashi.

Saving Dr. Callaghan’s daughter won’t bring Hiro’s big brother back, but the moment he sees her asleep and safe, he feels like he’s bringing a piece of Tadashi back home.

1.

Baymax was built to help people. Everybody is a potential patient. Everybody must be helped. Everybody must be cared for. It’s the way he is programmed.

There are patients and then there is Tadashi. His programmer. Creator. Baymax is built upon Tadashi’s efforts, time, code, and ideas. Tadashi was important, if only because Baymax cannot exist without Tadashi. Hiro says Tadashi is gone, but Tadashi is here. Baymax is part of Tadashi.

There are patients and Tadashi and then there is Hiro.

Patient.

Second programmer.

Friend.

It might not be the logic all robots are programmed with, but when it comes to Hiro, Baymax wants to care for him above all other patients. Robots do not _want_ , but there is no other word for it.

Hiro is special, if only because Baymax exists for Hiro. Baymax was built upon Tadashi’s desire to help others.

Above all, Baymax was built upon Tadashi’s love for Hiro.

0. 

Tadashi isn’t here.

But there is Krei awkwardly offering to sponsor the new superhero team. There is Dr. Callaghan weeping as he embraces his daughter before his court hearing.

There is Aunt Cass with her bustling energy and brave smile.

There is Wasabi with his new van. GoGo and her occasional smiles. Fred and his atrocious laundry habits. Honey Lemon and her beloved phone.

There is Baymax, who is part Tadashi and part Hiro. Their greatest joint project.

For the first time in fourteen years, Hiro’s older brother isn’t here to rescue him. Hiro is okay with that. He’s learned to do the rescuing now.

Tadashi isn’t here, but Hiro isn’t alone.


End file.
